Hero dogs have day
Published: May 8, 2007
Jango isn’t just man’s best friend.
“She is our guardian angel,” said a teary-eyed Darrell Unger, as he rubbed the ears of his nearly 11-year-old golden retriever yesterday.
“It’s going to be one of the saddest days of our lives when her time is up.”
Around Jango’s neck was a medal of bravery — one of four awarded yesterday to three dogs and a cat as they were inducted into the Purina Animal Hall of Fame.
Each animal, including an OPP service dog, had a doggone good story to tell.
Unger woke up in his Trail, B.C., home Jan. 22, 2006, to Jango’s frantic barking — out of character for the gentle family dog.
The house was on fire and quickly filling with smoke.
Unger raced to find his son, Koby, now 5, unconscious in his bedroom and the father followed Jango’s barks outside to safety. A passing Mountie later rescued Unger when he passed out while trying to rescue the two family cats.
All the pets survived.
“In my eyes, I have three heroes. Jango is my first hero,” said Unger’s wife, Christine, also crediting the bravery of her husband and RCMP Const. Derek Gallon.
“People don’t give their animals enough credit for being smart.”
In the past 39 years, the hall of fame has honoured 133 animals, including 109 dogs, 23 cats and a horse.
Echo, a shepherd-collie mix from Manitoulin Island, stayed with its owner Tish Smith, 42, when their canoe tipped in the frigid waters of Lake Huron last July.
Echo stayed with Smith for 12 hours before they were spotted by a Trenton search-and-rescue crew — the dog swimming circles around its unconscious owner.
“I thought she would die. I knew she could swim, but we were out there. I was crying, ‘I’m so sorry,’ ” Smith said.
“She’s my best friend.”
Also honoured was Alberta’s Mel-O, a usually mellow family cat that frantically woke up a sleeping 9-year-old Alex Rose in March 2006. The diabetic boy’s blood sugar had dropped dangerously low.
And retiring OPP service dog Ki spent six hours circling a Haliburton forest in January to find a lost man who was hypothermic and disoriented. “He just will not give up. He’s very tenacious,” said Ki’s partner, Const. Shawn Campbell.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
If you like this, you'll love Good Animal News:
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: